Suchergebnisse

The etymology and the development of the meanings of well-being, prevention and risk, as well as their relationships, are presented and discussed. It is reminded that the World Health Organization defined health as physical, mental and social well-being, and that the European Union prescribed a general and programmed primary prevention, integrated with the design of work situations. However, current interpretations and practices mistake well-being with wellness, and prevention with the management of existing risks, while usually attributing the responsibility to the acting subjects in the workplace. The Interdisciplinary Research Program "Organization and Well-being", for over three decades, has interpreted well-being as a perfectible process, and outlined pathways of work analysis that actually carry out primary prevention.

What does it mean to make a decision? Does a decision theory exist? How can we understand decision making? By using the traditional literary form of the "dispute", the authors explore the various approaches to the theoretical and empirical issue of decision making. Each of the three fictional characters represent a different way to approach the problem, each one showing, through a lively debate and dialogue, a specific point of view on what decisions are and how they can be understood. But this dispute is not just about decision making in itself. The characters also represent very different views about what an enterprise is, what rationality is, what are freedom and reality.

Work-life balance is one of the current issues within the academic, political, and managerial debate. An article discussed in a TAO Research Programs seminar held in June 2015 at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, suggests a critical interpretation of the mainstream literature and its related controversial results in terms of work-life reconciliation practices. The article also provides an alternative analytical framework based on Bruno Maggi's organization theory, Norbert Elias' theory of time, and Amartya Sen's theory of justice. Scholars from different universities and disciplines contribute with comments on the notions of time, justice, organization and the proposed interpretative framework as well.

A contribution in the medical field illustrates the historical evolution of the concepts of prevention and health to which it is necessary to refer for a discussion about health and safety in the workplace. Some contributions in the fields of labor law and organizational theory interpret the norms currently effective in Italy and the guidelines for the assessment of risks in work situations. What conception of prevention is implicitly assumed by the norms, and by the guidelines that the norms indicate? Are the current norms adequate to stimulate organizational choices aimed at preventing risks and discouraging harmful choices? Limits and contradictions hindering a real, effective, primary prevention are emphasized.

The Interdisciplinary Research Program "Organization and Well-Being" is aimed at identifying the relationships between the choices that structure the work processes, and the people's health, defined in terms of physical, mental and social well-being. A method allowing to connect the analysis of organizational choices and the biomedical analysis of their consequences on the involved subjects has been the object of studies and discussions for three decades. This debate includes comments expressed from points of view concerning: ergonomics, work psychodynamics, work sociology, work psychology, ergology, linguistic activity. The way to conceive organization, action research, inter-disciplinarity and multi-disciplinarity, in the various approaches here represented, are the main object of discussion.